The present invention relates to an ink-jet recording apparatus which has a slit-like ink issuing opening and is capable of flat-bed scanning.
Of the ink-jet recording apparatus of various types, one type is such that the ink drops are normally issued and only the ink drops which are required for recording are charged and deflected. In this ink-jet recording apparatus, the ink under pressure is supplied to a nozzle and a piezoelectric transducer mounted on the nozzle is driven at a high frequency so that the ink drops may be generated from the nozzle at the same frequency as the driving frequency. The ink drops are selectively charged in response to the character or pattern or image signal to be referred to as "the video signal" in this specification. The charged ink drop is deflected depending upon the charge on the drop when it passes through a pair of deflection electrodes and strikes against a recording paper, thereby forming a recording dot.
In the ink-jet recording apparatus with the above construction, the ink drops are always flying out and only the ink which is required for recording is charged and used for recording so that the ink which has not used for recording is recovered.
Another type of the ink-jet recording apparatus is such that a liquid chamber is provided at the rear of the nozzle of the ink-jet head and a piezoelectric transducer is located at the portion of the liquid chamber which is in opposed relationship with the nozzle or around the liquid chamber. In this ink-jet recording apparatus, when the voltage pulses are applied to the piezoelectric transducer, the volume of the liquid chamber is caused to rapidly contract, and the ink in the contracted volume flies our from the nozzle and strikes against the recording paper, thus forming a recording dot.
A further type of the ink-jet recording apparatus is such that a voltage is impressed between a nozzle filled with the ink and an electrode which is externally located so that the ink is drawn from the nozzle. This type of the ink-jet recording apparatus has the feature that the head is remarkably simple in construction and may be fabricated in a simple manner.
In the ink-jet recording apparatus of the types described above, only one nozzle is used for recording so that a mechanical horizontal scanning is required and consequently the apparatus has the defect that it is complex in construction. In order to render them into the electronic horizontal scanning apparatus, a large number of nozzles must be arrayed along a horizontal scanning. As a result, not only the fabrication of the apparatus is complicated but also there exists the defect that the degradation of reliability and maintainability due to the clogging of the nozzles is enhanced in proportion to the increase in number of nozzles.